About Carrie Fisher

Daughter of musical star Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher was destined for Hollywood from an early age. Her rise to international fame arrived in 1977, playing Princess Leia in Star Wars.

The daughter of Hollywood golden couple Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Fisher was born in Beverly Hills in 1956. Her father was Jewish, the son of immigrants from Russia, and her mother was Protestant. Her parents went on to divorce when she was two years old and her father married Elizabeth Taylor.

Having grown up in the limelight it was no surprise that Fisher opted for a career in showbiz. Her early appearances alongside her mother in Las Vegas when she was 12 years old stood her in good stead, and in 1973 she joined her mother again in the Broadway production of ‘Irene’.

Having left the States for the UK, Fisher enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama. Her first film appearance was in the comedy 'Shampoo' in 1975 starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn.

However, it was in 1977 that Fisher was rocketed to international stardom after landing the role of Princess Leia Organa in George Lucas's 'Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope'. Also starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford and Alec Guinness, ‘Star Wars’ was a critical and commercial phenomenon. Fisher and her co-stars became overnight superstars and the subsequent merchandise saw their faces on everything from posters and plastic dolls to duvet covers and fluffy slippers.

At the height of her Leia stardom, Fisher hosted a 1978 episode of “Saturday Night Live” and hit it off with several of the “Not Re6ady for Prime Time Players” – most notably, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd (to whom she was briefly engaged in 1980). So began Fisher’s descent into serious drug addiction, which would later inform her writings and overall survivor persona.

Fisher reprised her role in the equally successful sequels - ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ in 1980 and ‘Return of the Jedi’ in 1983. In between her galactic exploits on screen and her drug-fueled exploits off screen, Fisher tried to forge an independent screen identity apart from Leia, appearing as Belushi’s jilted fiancée in “The Blues Brothers” (1980) and Chevy Chase’ love interest in the misbegotten comedy “Under the Rainbow” (1981). Neither role did much to advance her career. She was in fact, still famous for who she was – famous daughter; famous princess and finally, famous girlfriend.

After dating singer Paul Simon on and off for several years, she married the music legend on Aug. 16, 1983 to much hullabaloo in the press, which had followed the couple’s every move for years. Unfortunately, the dating period lasted longer than the actual marriage, with Fisher’s growing drug dependency later cited as the main reason the union lasted only 8 months.

As her film career dwindled in the early 80s, Carrie turned her hand to writing, penning the semi-autobiographical ‘Postcards from the Edge’. Published in 1987, it became a bestseller and she won the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel. The book was turned into the equally successful film of the same name starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine in 1990.

Although her performance in the hit film ‘When Harry Met Sally’ was widely saluted by critics, Carrie began to devote her efforts to writing and over the subsequent years she released ‘Surrender the Pink’, ‘Delusions of Grandma’ and ‘The Best Awful’.